The last Bradford CoderDojo of the 2014/15 academic year

With the school summer holiday looming we had July’s Bradford Coder Dojo a little earlier in the month than usual. Given the proximity to the holidays and the decent weather it was an alright turn out as well. Good to see!

Amongst the usual activities, a session on Minecraft mods took out the whole two hours in one of the rooms, and was well attended. Great to see a new adult mentor in Jonny as well! The guys and gals coming out the session really enjoyed it!

In a break in Jonny’s session I introduced the attendees to iBeacons using my Estimote development kit with a practical demonstration - and then a game of hide-and-seek! Once the kids had all dispersed the grown ups in the room then had a good ten minute chat about what iBeacons could be used for. Great to see the grown ups as into the potential of tech as the young ‘uns, as well as playfulness! I’ll be picking up iBeacons in September’s session, along with a little intro to “data mashing”.

But that’s it now until after the summer break. We’re looking at getting the Dojos going again in September, the last Saturday of that and every month, so stay tuned!

There’s some things we are looking out for ahead of the return in September:

More younger kids to come along! So spread the word!

More kids that want to lead sessions.

Feedback on what would make the sessions “better”.

Feedback on what the kids would want to learn/play more of/with (so we could make sure there are sessions they wanna do).

More adult mentors!

What kit we could get hold of to boost the Bradford Dojo’s “stock cupboard”.

A little sponsorship to help fund the Dojo.

If you have been to the Dojo already but haven’t been back, any reason why?

If you fancy coming to the Dojo but haven’t been yet, any reason why?

If you’ve anything you can offer on those points let us know - you can drop me a line and I will pass it; my details are on my contact page.

Thanks to all the kids - and the grown ups - that have come to the Dojo over the past months. And an especially big thanks to Paul Scott for leading the Bradford Coder Dojo at the awesome Curriculum Innovation Centre. Him running the Dojo got me and my kids along in the first place, and got me into volunteering time to be an adult mentor. It’s been great fun! And thanks to Kriss and Shi for being mentors alongside me. And, of course, everyone who’s been! I hope you’re looking forward to September as much as we are!